done, Bono invited all the natives to come and see it.

Some four hundred of them came, all unarmed and quite unsuspecting and
happy. When all were gathered in the house, the Spaniards surrounded it,
and Bono told the Indians that they must give themselves up or they
would be killed. Some of them tried to run away, some to resist, and in
a few minutes the swords of the Spaniards had filled the place with the
dead and dying. One hundred and eighty of them were put in chains and
taken to the ship. About a hundred shut themselves up in another house
and tried to defend themselves there, but the Spaniards set fire to it
and the natives were all burned alive.

This was the return Bono and his men made to the innocent, gentle
Indians, who had been so kind to them. No wonder the heart of the
clerico was on fire with indignation when he heard the story. He went at
once to the three fathers and told them the dreadful tale. They
listened, but did nothing,--as usual. Not one of the one hundred and
eighty kidnaped Indians was set free, and neither Bono nor any of the
judges who had sent him was punished.

One day a priest came to the Protector of the Indians to tell him how
the native laborers in the mines near San Domingo were abused. He said
he had seen them lying in the fields, sick from overwork, covered with
flies, and nobody cared enough to give them food or drink; but their
owners allowed them to lie there and die in this way. Las Casas took him
by the hand and led him to the fathers, to whom he repeated this story;
but they only tried to excuse the cruelty of the mine owners.

The heart of the clerico burned within him as he saw so much suffering
and misery about him and could not get the three commissioners to put a
stop to it. Something, he felt, must be done. The fathers had now been
in the islands six months and things were no better than they had been
before their coming; so he resolved to go again to Spain and seek a
remedy for this state of things. When the fathers heard what he intended
to do they were much alarmed, but as they could not stop him, they sent
one of their number to Spain also, to speak on their behalf.

For some time there had been on the island of Hispaniola a number of
Franciscans,--or "Gray Friars," as they were sometimes called because of
the color of their robes, just as the Dominicans were called "Black
Friars," because they wore black and white. Both orders were sworn to
poverty, and both